Posts belonging to Category Cabernet Franc

Mon Coeur vineyard

We started “tasting wine” in 1978. We frequented a wine shop in West LA up the street from the Wine House which had recently opened. The shop was located in a bungalow that was once somebody’s home on Cotner. It was the outlet store for The Wine Merchant owned by Dennis Overstreet and located in Beverly Hills. His BH store had all the celebrity clients. The outlet spot was for the lumpen proletariat of LA’s budding wine scene. In 1978 the collector’s find was any Napa Cabernet from 1974. The first wave of Napa Cabernet producers was emerging that included Diamond Creek, Caymus and Ridge. Heitz Cellar was an old guard hot ticket along with BV Georges De Latour. The real sharpies were hunting down old vintages of Inglenook. The good thing about the Cotner store was the Saturday tastings which were loosely formed, spontaneous events. Once a sufficient threshold of aspiring snobs was present somebody bought a bottle and opened it right there in the store. The store clerks were not like the info-matics you find today in upscale wine versions of Target like Total Wine or BevMo [ed. he prefers Total Yawn]. The store clerks at the Cotner store were geeks, folks like the ones buying wine except they had to work somewhere and living in LA was still pretty cheap in the late 1970s so a wine shop was good as any other minimum wage shithole. And you could drink interesting wines when the air got thick with opinions and burning curiosity. (more…)

Three gloriously HOT days. Any wine sipping foo gonna hit the party party party circuit. NowhatImsayin? We did. IGTY had the best babes and the most relaxed scene. But when it came to wine the Krisses ruled the roost at Papa Fred’s Shack. The wines ranged from Northern Italy’s Alto Adige (Lagrein) to two Paso Robles’ Wild Horse whites to several Ros√©s that created a stir. The wine tasters also ranged widely. Necromancer, prodigy, novotiate, tenderfoot, shellback, bashful and laconic. Toss in a garrulous minx and there is the perfect 4th of July bash. Read what they had to say about the wines that washed across their wanting palates. (more…)

they have a wine

Poker players like to say “I’d rather be lucky than good.” Is this just another way of saying you do something often enough you’re bound to fall into something good sometime? Vince Neil and his band were very very lucky. They made superb RnR and at some point Vince made a wine. We have not tasted it. But we do have a motley assortment of other wine odds and ends. [ed. Dude that would have been cool tasting the Cr√ºe wine. I thought you knew people.] (more…)

Nothing quite like popping the cork on a First Growth Bordeaux to liven up the meal. The appearance of a member from this class of pedigreed wines is both rare and notable. Pull a cork on 1996 Barolo or a Chambolle-Musigny from any vintage – both of equal breed – it is a simple fact that more people will recognize the Bordeaux as the extra special wine that turns heads with its arrival. The President of the USA versus the richest man in Russia. Extra rare generic versus extra rare “who dat”. (more…)

It must be the end of the first quarter in the new decade. Expectations for change are high. The White House has found its cojones and set a new tone for in-your-face confrontation. Whatever, it seems like it is time to clear the deck on several items of marginal interest for which discriminating palates have grown exceedingly tired and for whom or which time has run out. Hold on to your Pinot balloon bowl. We’re going head hunting. (more…)